Mmm. I love the smell of partisan hackery in the morning.
The supposedly "independent" newspaper at the University of Maryland published an article on Tuesday dealing with Social Security, the irresponsibility of which must be seen to believe. I index the paper for the University Archives and so have to deal with the sub-standard reportage of the Diamondback on a daily basis as part of my job, so it isn't like I am unaccustomed to irresponsible journalism on their part. But now they'd written a poor, unbalanced piece on something that I actually cared about. It's ON.
Here was the text of my letter as printed in this morning's edition of the Diamondback:
I was appalled by Tuesday's Diamondback story "The Social Security shakedown," which represented irresponsible journalism at best and partisan shilling at worst. Although the reporter gave lip service to a few alternative plans to restructure the system (and it needs to be restructured), the focus was on President Bush's short-sighted plan to privatize the system. The graphics were derived from information provided by the Social Security Administration, which is not the most objective arbiter of the oncoming crisis. The "Social Security Deficit" chart indicates the trust fund will reach insolvency in 2042; in fact, other major agencies, such as the Congressional Budget Office, have determined the trust fund will remain solvent until 2052, or even later if simple fixes such as payroll tax increases are enacted (which was only mentioned after the page jump).
More telling, the story used the White House's terminology of "personal account" to describe the Bush plan; this terminology was selected after the term "private account" polled poorly and is only used by supporters of the president's plan. If anything, the two terms should both be used: "private/personal account." The accounts, moreover, are only nominally "voluntary," as the story implied; if enacted, the cuts necessary to make the transfer to private accounts will also affect workers who choose not to opt out of the system.
Real criticism of the Bush plan was stated vaguely and only at the end of the article. Where criticism of the Bush plan was discussed at length, it is of the type that suggests there is no need to worry about the problem because it is 40 years off. This makes opponents of the plan appear to be blind to the Social Security problem, as well as unconcerned with the future. This is patently false. While steps must be taken to ensure the continued existence of Social Security, the $5 trillion Bush plan is not one opponents of the plan believe to be economically sound.
I hope in the future The Diamondback, as the university's independent student newspaper, sees fit to write articles on such topics in a more balanced tone.
[Me]
Graduate student
History and library science
I got most of my information from sites linked to by Social Security advocates here and on Talking Points Memo, most notably from The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. Why write a letter on this, when I had never written a letter to the editor at all before? A few reasons, most notably A) I knew that as a student publication the Diamondback was likely to publish my letter; B) The Bush shilling seemed, to me, particularly strong here; C) As student media the editorial board has even less justification than the "Professional" media for taking sides in the form of an Opinion column masquerading as news. (Note that I feel the same way about newspapers where this is done from a liberal standpoint. Journalism is supposed to be objective, dammit.)
This diary is mostly to remind me of the thought process that went into the decision to actually write this LTE, though of course other people may feel free to comment on the letter, most helpfully with other stuff I should have included. Hopefully, having this under my belt will provide me with the impetus to start writing LTEs more frequently. "The journey of 1000 miles..."